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tv   After Words David Corn Michael Isikoff Russian Roulette  CSPAN  April 22, 2018 12:00pm-1:01pm EDT

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ronan farrow wrote on american foreign policy. economist d some oil examines why there is limited growth around the globe. and the former director of the centers for disease control recalls his tenure at the agency and the fears of the rich, the needs of the poor. >> ..
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thank you for being here. let me ask you, david, first, how did you come up with the title? how did you choose -- >> you're asking the right person. we struggled through a lot of choices which we will not reveal it in the middle of that process by 17-year-old daughter am i think you're 16 at the time, said dad, russian roulette. >> does she get royalties? >> today she actually negotiated with me her terms and she wanted a subscription to the "new york times" crossword puzzle. i said okay. we're getting off cheap. >> everybody that reads this book will have their own answer to this question but but i thik it's important to ask the authors, so let me ask you, "russian roulette" is a book
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about what happened in the 2016 election and how a foreign power, russia, intervene in our election it a a much more sophisticated way than anybody realized at the time, and the impact it had on the election itself. >> also i would say there's a lot of back story. we trace what led up to that point in terms of you might call it a rise of the new cyber cold war, tensions between the united states and russia, and the development on the russian side of a strategy, a plan to basically wage information warfare on the west. not just the united states but a western liberal democracies to undermine democracy in the west. >> you guys came up with a very readable, digestible book, something i spent and others spent hours and hours receiving
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testimony. when i was finished i said i just wish i would read the book. it was very readable but i noticed in the beginning and in the end, the bookends are donald trump in office, the introduction and afterward but really the start of the book is the 2013 miss universe pageant in moscow. how did you take that as a starting point? >> if you were looking for a moment that the trump russian story comes together, it's really there. you have donald trump and moscow, and he's there to preside over the miss universe pageant, but what is his real agenda? is it a business deal to build a trump tower and moscow, and secondarily although a part of that is to meet vladimir putin to cultivate a relationship with vladimir putin. >> you are describing an almost being on this quest to meet vladimir putin. >> he was obsessed with getting a meeting with putin.
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he hoped putin was going to come to the universe -- miss universe pageant, and he was told that putin would be calling. the one day come he's only there two days and one night. and the afternoon of the patch itself he's asking everybody around him, is putin coming? have we heard from putin yet? he was pretty much obsessively focused on meeting with putin. why? this is one of the big mysteries that pervades throughout the book, clearly there's an element of autocrat, psychologically picky like the way putin writes his country. he would aspire to run our country the way putin writes his country, but also in order to get that business deal, to get the trump tower and moscow built -- >> which was not his first attempt. he had been there before. >> right. but he knew that getting the green light from the top would be the one way to ensure the
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project could go forward. >> and you know that if you're out there criticizing putin, it's not going to help you get the project past, , i gigantic project passed in moscow. he knew that, and you're right, for 30 years starting any 80s it been trying to get a big project of one kind or another develop and moscow, and it didn't happen. then with me this university hooked up with the russian oligarch. >> he has the sherpas basically that are russia and the bureaucracy so to speak of russia. how does all of that unfold? >> it's interesting because part of this is farce. it's all very serious but we describe in the book how a british talent manager named rob goldstone who is a bit of a character, and the pop singer
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whose last name is -- son of the russian oligarch just mentioned. he's trying to figure how to juice up his grip. his day job is working for his dad department company and being the son of a russian oligarch but he wants to be a pop singer. they are trying to figure out how to do this and a hook up with the miss universe contest, which is owned by donald trump at the time, co-owned, and to basically say you should bring the pageant to moscow. mike has called these guys the rosenkranz characters -- >> you're stealing my line. >> sharing, sharing your line. they managed to negotiate this deal between miss universe and donald, to hold it in moscow. the point is we talked a moment ago about how to build a tower,
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you needed to have putin's permission. but to do anything and moscow really, trump had to hookup with an oligarch, in this case an oligarch friendly to putin. he's already kind of in bed with his corrupt regime. he starts tweeting out immediately in mid-2013, will putin be my new bff when i bring the contest to moscow? you got remember this time there's not much of the question of the type of guy putin is. he's come back to power after being out of power for a couple of years pulling things behind -- >> medvedev had been president for several years. >> buddies back fully empower. human rights abuses, journalists and dissidents are routinely murdered in this regime. he passed a law basically making it illegal to talk about gay rights. this was a few months before the annexation of crimea and the intervention of ukraine.
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all trumpcare's about putin is whether he will be his friend and whether he can do this business deal. >> there's an after story to this miss universe pageant. it's an entertaining introduction to the world of donald trump, the world of vladimir putin, how they interacted. >> one thing that people don't appreciate when you're looking for motives behind all trump russian story at least from trump's perspective, trump signed a deal for a letter of intent to sign between the trump organization and the group that -- >> at that the closest it got io actually seeing and development happen? >> yes. actually a formalized arrangement to do. donald trump, jr. is put in charge of the project. ivanka trump five to moscow in february 2014 to scout potential sites for the trump tower with the pop singer what's happening
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in february 2014? that's when trump is annexing crimea. >> no. >> sorry, putin. >> trump hasn't gotten to that yet. >> this is what i need a co-author. putin annexes crimea, intervenes in ukraine. the united states and the european union respond with its sanctions, including against a rush majority-owned bank knows when to finance the trump tower project, and the deal collapses. we code rob goldstone in the book is a he believes that's what killed the deal -- quote -- it was the imposition of sanctions. if you are looking for at least an explanation of why trump, not just was sympathetic to putin, but hostile to the idea of sanctions on russia speedy it killed his business deal. >> that an important insight to understand and appreciate everything that comes after.
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>> you talked about some of the characters in the book, and in the circle of donald trump one of them is rob goldstone would work on michael jackson's bad tour in 1987. he was npr and there's a hint in the early part of the book donald trump tells them something that that is future s that's favorite instrument of for what comes later. >> this is in november of 2013, and we talk about how while he was in moscow as mike mentioned he was obsessed, trump was obsessed with meeting putin. he was only there for a limited time. he was supposed to be there for another day or so. one reason he wasn't because of the night before he flew in he attended a big gala celebration of billy grams 95th birthday. we -- >> invited by franklin who is the son, one of the leaders who also had been a birther like
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donald trump had been. i don't know if that was the bonding they engaged in but anyway, he went this way got to moscow a day or so later than expected to be, and while he was a very explained to rob goldstone that attending the billy graham -franklin graham event was something he just had to do a cause of his future plans. >> that's right. you quote, you quoted donald trump assaying their something unplanned down the road and it's really important, this attending this event was really important because of his future plans. so are you guys think basically at the point in 2013 that donald trump was planning to run for president? >> he was certainly thinking about it. we knew he talked about a lot in 2011 about running in 2012. 2012. >> is perceived as -- >> right. but also there's another sort of after story, or epilogue to
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this, which is even after the trump tower deal collapses, goldstone goes to trump in trump tower in january 15. talk about as the first trump tower meeting that nobody knew about until i book came out and they meet trump there and trump says to the singer, maybe next time you'll be singing in the white house. so we telegraphing his plans to run for president to the singer, the son of the oligarch. another point on the significance of this is you guys in the intelligence community and we in the press been a lot of time on the trump tower meeting. the with the people who set that up? goldstone and i i can letter. the e-mails are pretty clear. these cast of characters sort of
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run through the story. >> think about this, the first trump tower meeting in january 2015. trump is sharing his ideas or, the notion that he might run for president with emin. he probably told his dad who is tied in with putin and the whole power structure of moscow. it's kind of like an early -- to the russians that trump is considering running and then it's a 50 months or so later when the second meeting happened and offer of dirt on hillary clinton is presented to the top of the trump campaign, don junior, jared kushner, paul manafort comes initially from the father who says basically the attorney general has
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information wants to pass to the campaign. so you have high levels of the russian government probably first being informed of this and then while the time trump is securing the nomination 2016, now signaling come this is a key thing. whether the after or not the russians are signaling to the trump campaign we want to help you. we want to do it secretly and its coming through a channel that trump trusts his former business partner with whom he made millions of dollars in this universe and we might want to do business -- >> that's his partner. >> it's not like coming out of the blue. these are his basically his people in moscow. i think that's one reason why donald trump, jr. and others took it so seriously and it's kind of, it's incredibly high level of this is coming from.
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>> the book is full of great vignettes and also kind of gives your sense of donald trump's mine. so going back to the meeting in early 2015 when emin and goldstone walk in his office, donald trump is listening to a rap song about himself. >> they try to explain to in the words don't make you look good. he says speedy he says who cares? it's yet got 89 hits on youtub. it's the marketing, you know, that's a trump measures success. >> the idea that basically any press for him is good press. >> right. people talking about you is what he cares about most. >> that some of the the departt donald trump as he was contemplating running for president, and you start to have these russian oligarchs and others around him, but at the same time he also trace how russia and vladimir putin in particular are becoming more aggressive in terms of active measures. what are active measures? >> that's an old cold war term.
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with the soviets described they did to us, of course we did similar things to them but basically it was information warfare. it was planting disinformation for the purpose of exploiting political divisions within the country. the soviets did this for years, planting stories about how the cia was behind the aids virus or were using, develop biological weapons in vietnam. there was a long history of this, which had kind of died down after the fall of the soviet union but was revived by putin and his top people during this time. one of the most important parts of our book is to reveal how the u.s. government had a source inside the kremlin during this
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time with all this was developing, 2014, who is providing incredibly revealing insights into what's going on in putin's court, including the content for which putin and his top people viewed obama and his white house, often very crude, races terms. but the most significant insight that the source provided was about putin's plans for information warfare against the west, cyber attacks, disinformation the undermining, developing relationships with other entities like within france, the right wing xenophobic party. this is all laid out in top secret cables from the u.s. embassy to washington, and one
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of the sad part of the story is that didn't get the attention it should at. >> and you also talk about an article that didn't get much brought attention, ultimately the american intelligence community did notice it but it was not a general, valerie -- >> to go for the book on page 43 it says in february 2013 the general, the chief of staff of russians armed forces publish an article and unobscured russian military journal advocating that russia adapters military strategies to the modern world. the piece initially received little attention within the u.s. national security establishment but after radio liberty publish a translation use officials took notice. it was a russian military leader proposing a new doctrine that could shape the russian would engage and to battle with the united states. what was he proposing? >> he was noting somewhat president that the war of the future of the will of the
quote
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present would that be between the titans versus battalions, fighter jets jet versus fighte. it would be you could wage the war from a distance piggies talking about information warfare campaign. propaganda, disinformation and cyber attacks, too, which could be one of her structure, electrical grids and so forth. anti-what is most chilling about what he's describing their, and he became known as the gerasimov doctrine is he talked about the battle of the future be waged by exploiting the population of your foe. that means exploding -- exploiting the divisions and the political conflicts and troubles of your target, , of your enemy. if you look at what happened with the facebook, social media campaign and what they did in terms of hacking the dnc and john podesta e-mails, all those
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moves were designed to fuel and to increase the intensity of divisions already within our society. they targeted wedge issues of race, emigration. gun safety. they got involved in a way of trying to turn the bernie sanders wing, your party, against the hillary clinton wing of your party, and then make that more difficult for the democratic party over all. he kind of nailed it. that was, you have a data of the secret source that mike just mention. you have gerasimov doctrine. the right about the story that was written by time magazine that in the spring of 2016 there was a military intelligence officer of russia that was intercepted saying we have a plan against hillary clinton. you have reported from the "new york times" writing in june of
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2014 about the internet research agency, the troll form in st. petersburg. and in december of 2015 he goes on podcast and says you know all those trolls i wrote about over year ago? they are now after supporting donald trump. you put all these points together. i know it's easy to look back in hindsight, but there were certainly strong indications, some in the public record, that they were aiming for this. and all our reporting we covered internal meetings in the situation room and staff people. they had no clue. intelligence community have not put all this together and told president obama, and ashes get a council staff, something big is afoot. >> you know something about this. >> there's nothing i could say here, but you're right about how the initial reaction was one of,
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well, this has been done before, and do something different about this approach and no, different from the past and similar to what north korea supposedly did to sony. what was that difference? >> look, cyber attacks had become a hallmark of the era, right? including political cyber attacks. remember in 2008 the chinese attacked, get into the computer systems of both the obama and the mccain campaigns. but that was political cyber espionage. >> there are going in and looking. >> there are going in looking, trying to get insight into who will be the next national security adviser, how does he or she do the world. with a likely due? this is what intelligence agencies are supposed to do. >> and what we were doing, no doubt. >> and what the nsa does routinely, trying to understand the adversary can understand
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what a foreign power, how it's government works. what was different here was that this wasn't just espionage. this was a version of information warfare because what the russians did after getting into the dnc, after getting into john podesta e-mails which gave him access to the entire communications of the clinton campaign, is there were using it for a fact. the dumping of those e-mails, the critical moment comes on the eve of the democratic convention when wikileaks starts to mass dump the internal dnc e-mails that have been collected by the russian intelligence services, and caused this mass disruption. what happens in those early days of the democratic convention? you remember, debbie wasserman schultz, dnc chair, has to resign. her top staff has to resign.
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the clinton and the sanders campaigns are at each other's throats. >> and the but he is walking each other. >> this is all because of what the russians were doing, which was a pretty astonishing moment in american politics. >> in all of your research come in your interviews, did you get a sense for why now? why in this era? is it because of the advent of social media and they can do a jump that is widely distributed? why now? >> i think that's a good question. i think there are two components to it. mike talk about how we had the return of active measures. i think that is generated by putin's increasing adversarial position to the west. we traced this back a a littlet in the book. he sort of reasserts his control over the russian government after, in the middle of the arab spring when the united states has launched a military
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dimension with allies and is beginning to think well, looks like they are instituting regime change. i may be susceptible to regime change. >> he thinks it could be next. >> and then at the end of that year, the end of 2011 legislative elections in russia. his party wins, no surprise, but they don't win by as bigger margin and there are accounts of massive fraud throughout the election in favor of his party and there are demonstrations. tens of thousands of russians are coming out. hillary clinton comes out and basically criticizes the election, and putin immediately blames her for instigating the election. this is an active measure -- so this is like the u.s. covertly trying to overthrow him. the interesting thing we write about in the book, one of the interesting things is that we
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talked to people who are high up in the obama white house, in the foreign-policy apparatus. when you look at libya, the action there, you looked at their criticism of the 2011 election angelica 2013, and early 2014 when the obama administration tries to get to a new government in ukraine during the ukraine crisis, putin is say this is a plot. this is a plot against me and mighty russia. they all thought that by large that was him blowing smoke for domestic political consumption. they didn't really believe that obama was trying to overthrow him, but they came to the realization that yes, he did, that he had a paranoid view of the world. he had an expansion this is the about what he wanted to do with russia, and he did believe he had to fight back against the west and undermine the liberal western order that he felt was in a sense attacking him. >> so in his mind this was a
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defensive action. >> well, i'm not sure you'd call it defensive. it may be going on offense against perceived foes, and then, you know, , rush is not a great country when it comes to economic might come a lot of influence around the world, and what social media does and what cyber does is it creates an asymmetry so that we are more wired than they are if they're pretty wired but we are even more wired so that means whitmore vulnerable. he saw with the department of this research that this was a front, a battlefront that you can fight with us as toto, if t leapfrog over. >> you also mentioned early on there's a woman that worked at the internet research agency that comes forward and -- >> there was a russian whistleblower who helped expose the internet research agency.
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david mention adrian chen who wrote the great story in the "new york times" magazine but the first story is in the russian press. there was a brave woman who saw what was going on inside this troll pharma, saw how these phony personas were being created, this false propaganda was being put out on social media and one of the key points, breaking point for her was a murder of boris nhtsa, probably the most charismatic leading russian opposition leader who was murdered in the shadows of the kremlin on a bridge in 2015 and there were widespread suspicions about what happened. it's never come at the case of have been resolved that she's order to put out that these were, this was a ukrainian job she knows it's nonsense and to her that was, i've got to go public with this and she reaches
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out to him russian report and e speak to in the book and says i can't take this anymore. i work for a troll farm. after explosive. the first stories come out. again coming back to the miss signals, it was in the russian press. losing the american press. the warning signs were all there. >> one of the things we try to do in the book and failed was spying summary within the intelligence community, fbi, cia goes on to this early. i just figured that he be somebody who is knocking on doors ringing the bell and saying, hey, there's something big here, , we're not paying enough attention. we had some indications prior to 9/11 but there were some analysts and some people who saw the threat about, more clearly than the bush-cheney white house did in the clinton white house,
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too. i can't think we've got to find this person, this guy or gal, because that would be a a great story. maybe that person is out there, give me a call if you see this. but we failed. we never found -- >> the earth some early on like -- >> outside the fbi. we talk about how he's trying to tell his former colleagues about this and it's not catching on. i think we used the phrase in the book that came out of the 9/11 commission, they said the biggest and was a failure of imagination. i think in this instance the intelligence community failed to see this, imagine what it could be and failed to tell people who need to know, the policymakers, obama and everybody else around him. >> that's important because i think oftentimes we don't appreciate the brave journalism that's going on in other countries. we tend to assume this monolith
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that speed is especially in russia where the stakes are very high and the consequences can be fatal. >> there are journalists are basically given their lives in opposition to lot of state policies out there and i thought it was fascinating that you describe how this woman comes forward, and in the russian press, the folks that pick it up and run with it. >> right. >> let me ask you all, who is the hero in this story? is there one? i had to say i didn't seem to pick up necessarily. >> it's not congress. it's sad because you are no heroes. there were people who saw it more clearly than others at the time, particularly in the sum of 2015 and 2016. look, the clinton campaign was trying to call attention as much as they could. >> but you said they were discredited, not discredited a
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challenge when they tried to make that narrative. >> of course. what was driving them worth the e-mails were getting towns which was unflattering for hillary clinton and her inner circle. the clinton foundation pay to play, the internal matching nations within the clinton campaign, they failed to release our wall street speeches which bernie sanders challenged her picture refused to do it and it doesn't? the russians do it. it was hard for the clinton campaign to credibly make the point to the press that they were the victims here because it look like, quite rightly, they were trying to deflect from the own trouble. >> in a way i see some of the clinton people, we describe in the book, it's like they are the hitchcockian anxiety driven. the gc was and we do believe, and i think early on maybe even and exactly since which proves to be true that the russians are attacking them. they are the target hillary clinton is the target speedy are
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you saying there waiting anxiously day after day anticipating this dump of e-mails? >> yeah, after the first dumpy for the democratic convention -- after the dump of the democratic convention they know, there are strong reasonably john podesta is emails have been hacked as well and probably others. so every day of the campaign they are waiting for not the next shoe but the next shoe store to dump to fall on them. they are trying to get other people to take this seriously. but for good reason people he was a doing is an active deflection. give them credit for realizing it's a big story by selling in a political and private was very tough but i do fault also the media and the reporters. because the story was out there from the beginning that it was of the russians and this is underway. understand why political journalist covering the campaign focus on the content of the e-mails and the political
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consequences of the e-mail, but most of the media still was very slow to pick up on this, especially after the white house i think belatedly but still in early october put out a statement saying yes, it is the russians doing this. the problem was as you will recall that statement came out on the day a certain video was released from access hollywood and that also that day was a baby started releasing the podesta e-mails. >> i believe that was october 7. >> which also happen to be the birthday of vladimir putin. happy 64. >> we will get to that in a second, but you all seem to give a cold assessment, and this book is very much a fact-based account based on your research, public information, but there really is not much of you guys on a soapbox here. eifert both the you speak about
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the subject very passionately. so how hard was it to not get in there and really editorialize in the book? there's a little bit but just mostly subtle stuff. >> i think this is first and foremost the book you want to tell a story about fax. we obviously have our own perspectives on this, but the power, the strength of it is that it lays it out and we are not carrying water for anybody in this book. we give a very cold analysis of the obama white house and its failure to respond, the not the type tidings of stinky trying to figure out what to do. >> and you point out that the clinton campaign was disappointed with the president of the obama white house and really -- >> as well a lot of people within the obama white house disappointed at the field of the president to respond more forcefully, even when there were people inside saying, hey, , wee
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got to push back against -- >> in his defense he was worried that it would look like he was trying to tip the election or put his finger on the scale. >> president obama did not want to be perceived as political, and there's an element of his own image, self image of their that first, i don't want to be out there and to be accused by my foes of trying to tilt the election. >> paul ryan and mitch mcconnell were not going to help. >> we tell that story, too, have the the president tried to put up, come up with a bipartisan response. he thought this was an attack on the american election. i don't always like the word medley, intervention in the we used to pick it was an attack, information worker attack. he was hoping you could get paul ryan and mitch mcconnell to join together in some sort of public statements think this is happening and these are the steps they concetta take to deal
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with it. we describe in the book that paul ryan was somewhat empathetic to trying to work together and that mitch mcconnell just adamant no, this is bs, this is politics. he was also boxed in because he is a candidate is a nominee of, donald trump, with other thing this isn't happening, or it's a hoax, or it's a way to underscore, part of rigging the election. he was doing this even after, even brief, on august 17th, 2016 as the republican nominee. he gets an intelligence briefing. in the book james clapper who is been the director of national intelligence, confirms to us that at that briefing trump is told office hacking and this dumping going on, wikileaks, it's all a russian operation. he's told, michael flynn is in the room. chris christie's in the room was
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working for trump at that time. has no impact at all on trump. not on the campaign. they continue for weeks afterwards and even after that statement comes out in early october saying it's a hoax, making this up, it's not happening. one thing we do say in the book, a little bit of editorializing perhaps our release coming to conclusion is that if you look at what trump is saying at this point in the campaign on working toward election, in a way he's aiding and abetting, these are words, the russian effort. we don't put this in a book, the way i i like to think of it isf you're in front of the bank and you're told that a robbery going on in the bank and people are walking past you can you keep saying there's no robbery here. that only can help the bank robbers. people go on about collusion. i doubt very much donald trump had a meeting with russian agents and figured out what documents to steal by hacking
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and two released by wikileaks. but this is kind of a cooperative arrangement. he's a licit. he's helping them by making sure it's confusing. if you are moscow and you're watching this while the campaign is also reaching out to you, george papadopoulos and others means which we have discussed yet, i don't know, if i'm putin and i'm running this operation, i'm getting a signal, trump is not unhappy with this. >> i want to ask you about that now because a country has really been quite honestly torn up for a while now over the question of collusion, whether donald trump or his campaign associates colluded or conspired with the russians who interfered with our 2016 election. so if somebody was going to make the case for collusion, what would it be based on which event? >> first of all, to some degree the debate has been sort of
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clouded by the use of the word. it's kind of elastic one can define it the way you want to. i agree, we found no smoking, we found no smoking gun evidence of there was an explicit agreement to work together. i think the aiding and abetting metaphor is a better one to use. it was a a conspiracy to attack our election by the russians, and trump and his people aided and abetted it. they did it in many different ways and that may not have been acting necessarily in coordination, but it is kind of strange when you take a step back and look at all the various connections that people who locked to the trump campaign had
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with russians or russian cutouts. leave aside trump we discuss him and his interest in doing a business deal, speedy you are talking harder page. >> paul manafort, the campaign chairman, when we quote victoria, the assistant secretary of speedy who is also victim of dumping. >> the first victim of putin information warfare campaign, when she finds out manafort is a chairman of the trump campaign, she says manafort, he's been a russian stooge for 15 years. she knew this because manafort had been a very major presence in ukraine as the consultant to the pro-russia political party, together coverts, the pro-russia president of russia, ukraine, collected millions of dollars for that. had as his chief assistant in tm a guy who write about in the
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book who was a no russian intelligence agency in fact, we just learn in recent days -- >> former. >> no, no. and recent filing the fbi says he has ties to the russian military intelligence agency, the gru. so you have speedy paul manafort ends up stiffing a russian oligarch -- >> that's another, new one which we're learning even more about as the days go on turkey event a business partner of the guy who was a billionaire oligarchs was as close to putin has anybody who also i've been tagged by the fbi blocked from entering the country because of a suspected ties to organized crime. they had a falling out. he was pursuing manafort for millions of dollars picky thought it stick sticking in ue
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cable deal in this is all while manafort is about to take over the campaign picky thing how did by this, putin connected oligarch, and how does putin respond? he start e-mailing with his trusted deputy there and manafort response thing may we can offer deripaska briefings, private briefings on the campaign. >> he tries to leverage his position. >> think about what he's offering. he's not is offering information to deripaska. is offering information to putin. if you give this information to deripaska you have to expect or assume it's going to go elsewhere. starting june 14, 2016 come is is a date the "washington post" reveals that the dnc has been hacked, and right away the news report is that the russians are behind. so at that point in time, any point from that point on, if
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you're talking about getting information to the russians, if you're meeting with the russians, if you reaching out to the russians like george papadopoulos was, you are working with or agreeing to help people who come there's at least strong evidence that is not conclusive yet, who are attacking our campaign, our election. it's not just getting information to business associate of yours. it's getting information that can go right through the russian intelligence and to the top. >> just to finish up on your question. so all these people, i mentioned manafort, michael flynn had flown to moscow in december 2015 on the russian government, celebratory tenth anniversary in sitting next to vladimir putin at the dinner. >> and pocketing $45,000. >> and pocketing $45,000. carter page, a member of the
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foreign-policy advisory team who know sooner when he gets name to the pain gets invited to moscow and criticizes policy and has meetings with various russian figures, e-mails of the campaign think i got strong insights into the russian thinking. george papadopoulos, another foreign-policy adviser, remember, who then is meeting with his criminal cutouts in london and were offering them dirt on hillary clinton in the form of thousands of e-mails that the russians supposedly had. put all this together and actually there's quite a bit going on. >> it's hard to see this as a string of coincidences because without these connections with france -- >> i was reading it and i think most people will wonder, how to get all these folks with strong russia connections that come into the trump campaign? do they seek out the campaign? tessa campaign seek them out?
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how does this happen? >> it's a bit of both and part of it is the russians seeking them out. part of the story here is russian intelligence trying to worm its way speedy did russia send these folks over to the campaign? >> i don't think so but i do think once they become members of the campaign, in case of papadopoulos and carter page, they try to entice them into better relations. it's not that hard a job. turns out the trump campaign wants to have not just better relations with russians come there trying to great indicates a george papadopoulos what he calls an off the record communication channel with putin's of office. first hopalong postcrisis that of, i can do a summit meeting between trump and putin during the campaign. eventually manafort says will not do that, trump except having that way. but continue with your contacts and he is described in robert
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mueller's on filing, he tries to create this backdoor communication with putin's own office. if i'm the russians i'm just saying wow, this is great, is 29-year-old guy, were happy to talk to him and see what we can do. >> i think people sort of forget, when the fbi begins its investigation into all this in july of 2016, the public knows nothing about at the time, it's a counterintelligence investigation, that the most important part. from the fbi's perspective they are seeing all this and they are not necessarily investigating collusion at that point. there trying to understand what are the russians up to? how is it that the russians are making overtures to all these people in the trump campaign? they seem to be cultivating relationships with one particular campaign, and that is a disturbing thing from a counterintelligence perspective, that a foreign government is
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essentially insinuating itself into the power structure of one of the two political campaigns, one of which is about to become president. >> while all the hiking is going on. >> we talk about at the end of july shortly after the democratic convention how john brennan, the cia chief, has this realization there's something big going on and basically puts together a swat team of the nsa, fbi and cia to start configure what's going on. and about the same times when this fbi counterintelligence investigation is taking off. >> but this is after, there was a lot of inactivity and not a lot of sharing of information. for example, the dnc, the top leadership of the dnc did not go -- did not know for the longest time that they are the victims of hacking, and according to your book, your reporting, the
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fbi when they contact the dnc to do something very peculiar. they don't call debbie wasserman schultz. what do they do? >> they go to this low-level guy, the i.t. guy speedy action what they do is -- [talking over each other] >> call the help desk. >> they literally get referred to an outside contractor,. >> to an outside contractor who study cybersecurity guy. he's the guy you call when you're troubling -- trouble with your e-mail system and you try to get a restored. >> did you figure, why did they do that? >> from their perspective, you know, they've got lots of people they have to notify. they've got a long list. this did not necessarily leaked out as the biggest one on their to do list. [talking over each other] >> and remember the perspective from 2008.
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okay, if this is political cyber espionage like the chinese did, okay -- >> don't invite them into intelligence gathering. >> it did not leaked to the top of the to do list and that something the fbi should have to explain better but also the communications within the dnc or rather pathetic as well. nobody informs the top brass and this goes on for months. >> once they do in the dnc hires a third-party vendor which is excellent at what they do, , but even their advice early on is, for the dnc not to alert the hackers that they know this -- >> this this is a tough dilemmaf cybersecurity. as mike mentioned the first calls of 2015 and is not until april of 2016, what is is that, nine excruciating months later, that the dnc i.t. people figure out what it is the fbi was
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alluding to do, even though that been multiple phone calls and e-mails over that stretch of time between the fbi and the dnc. crowd strike comes in and what they do, immediately they say can't tell anyone. you can't change your behavior because it's going to take us a while to figure out how to boot out the russian hackers. it turns out are two groups of russian hackers who are not even acting jointly. if you start changing their behavior they will burrow in in a way that will make it harder for us to block them out. it takes them six weeks to figure out how to shut down the system, to get it going and make sure the russians are gone. this is part of the tragic story here. in that six-week timeframe the russians are still coming and going and grabbing material, and as it turns out much of the material that cause the problem
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at the democratic convention, which was very dnc officials, not clinton campaign people that dnc officials complaining about bernie sanders and his campaign because by then he clearly lost the race, he wasn't getting out and is a pretty typical political conflict. party wants it out, move to the general, , wanting to rally behd hillary. he's already do that. these people were not ready. there's a lot of bitching and moaning and stupid ideas can meet we can push met this way or that way. nothing really happens. it's more like venting but all that material is what's grabbed in the six weeks after its first discovered and later dumped. that is what causes the biggest problems and do some people in the d.c. -- in the dnc, they're so frustrated they didn't shut down right away. the cybersecurity people said, we can't. >> let me ask you, when people
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talk about pollution, they asked the question whether there was collusion, it often comes back to a few things. the trump tower meeting, for example, the christopher steele dossier. tell us about those. >> will look, we discussed the trump tower meeting earlier in the real damning stuff is what's public, that what the offer was, the dangle to the trump campaign coming from goldstone, coming from agalarov through goldstone but that didn't send a signal. the christopher steele dossier i'll be waiting for your reports, judgment on that, but look, it's a mixed bag. clearly it had a role. there's a question, dismissing it because it was seen as read by the top. christopher steele did have a track record with both the fbi and the state department. he was a real guy who knew his speedy it was a reputable british intelligence officer.
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>> no question it was also paid for by the clinton campaign. i don't think that was fully understood by the fbi, and you can fault the fbi for perhaps that asking more aggressive question at the time about how it is that christopher steele came to do what he did. and clearly the most sensational allegation, the one that got all the attention we point out in the book that christopher steele doesn't even really stand by that at this point, he says at best 50-50. i'm talking about the golden shower with prostitutes in the hotel room. but in broad strokes he was onto something that was real, which was they really was a concerted russian effort to influence the election and to forge ties and work with the trump campaign. some of his details have yet to be corroborated and may never
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be, but the broad strokes, he had something. >> and he came to the conclusion in june 2016 which predates even the fbi's own investigation. he had caught wind of something, and one thing we haven't talked about yet which i think is highly significant is in the first report, june 2016, he talked about how one way the russians were trying to cultivate trump over the years, was to dangle business opportunities for him. we didn't know this at the time during the campaign, we only learned this a few months ago, in time for us to get in the book, but the first few months while trump was campaigning for president, leading the republican pack, he and michael cohen who are in the news easy for other recent rakhine negotiate yet another business deal and moscow. a secret deal for another trump tower had been brought to them
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by a fellow trumpet work with in the past. step back and think about that for a second. while g20 for president saying he only cares about america first, and he is refusing, again and again, to criticize putin and a bazaar series of positive statements about putin, all of this media entities, he at that time is trying to negotiate a deal that could only go forward with putin's government. >> while he is running for president. >> he never told the public that. it has been reported. tenable. i still think that the implication of that, i mean, that's collusion in the way, and trump kept saying later i have nothing to do with russia. he was negotiating a a deal. he signed a letter of intent. >> to last question for you all, real quick. october 7, 2016, because i've read that as kind of the emblematic of this whole campaign. >> you can write a book about
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october 7. >> for about a a minute, what happened on october 7? >> it all comes together. the intelligence community is after, debating and talking about this for weeks, it's going to put at its public statement that yes, , the russians are interfering in our election and this could only happen with the highest, people from highest levels of the criminal. a deep inside the white house and intelligence committee this will be a bombshell. unprecedented statement that will dominate the news for perhaps the rest of the campaign. what happens within an hour of the release? access hollywood tape suddenly cable nonstop trump talking about women and all that. and then within an hour or so of that the podesta e-mails are dumped by wikileaks. it's one of the most extraordinary days in american politics. it all came together on that day, vladimir putin's birthday. >> and donald trump ends up winning the election in november.
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investigation still continues, the and the senate, though, the house is done for now but the senate, bob mohs investigation. but let me ask you this very important question for the country. wasn't this the last time we'll see russia involved in a a presidential election? was at the beginning? where to become from here? >> before we have the next presidential election we had something we know you care about, the midterm election 2010. one thing we write about in the book that didn't get a lot of attention at the time was that the russian operation not just focus on the presidential campaign. they attacked the democratic congressional campaign committee which you know, the group that supports democratic house candidates and dumped information that was injurious to democratic candidates, and from very key races, some of the top races of the dccc. it worked to great effect. they influence the outcome of certain races in florida and
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elsewhere in 2018. didn't get a lot of attention because we're focused on the presidential. that is a strong sign that if they care to they know how to do this again, and house elections i think in some ways, you may have strong views on this, may be more prone susceptible to outside interference. they may not all be sophisticated security systems. it's very easy to dump ads for create ads with dark money base information that was hacked and released from anonymous bloggers. there's a lot of ways to screw around with the house race. that's with the money is a lease and this political season. until we see a real concerted effort and know that that is ay that the federal government can stop this, i think everybody should worry about some sort of repeat in 2018 it will be even get to 2020. >> we will definitely remain vigilant. congratulations on a great book. thank you.
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>> thank you. >> c-span, where history unfold the daily. .. created as a public service by america's cable television companies and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events aroundington, d.c., and the country. c-sp c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. >> and it now please welcome multi- award-winning singer-songwriter and philanthropist ms. dolly parton. [cheers and applause]

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